Dinner Bowl #86

 

Time for soup? In August? Yes. This is creamy mushroom barley soup with lentils and dill from the recipe at The First Mess. 

I made a few adjustments based on what I had, but I can give this a resounding endorsement. If, like me, you buy dill and then have tons more dill than can be used in one recipe, you have to go looking for other ways to use it. I didn't have as many mushrooms as I ought to have had, and I blitzed some strained soup broth with cashews to make the cream. My lentils were French green lentils rather than black, and I had red onion instead of yellow. Rather than sherry vinegar, I used cooking sherry. These are all minor adjustments, and the soup was delicious!

It also finished off my barley. The pantry utilization quest continues, but I think I am making a tiny bit of progress. I recently acquired pantry goods from friends who moved away, so I have some new things to try, but I'm plugging along.

One thing that has also been helping is that I avoid grocery shopping until I have to go grocery shopping. Bewilderingly, that means that now I make a plan for a week's worth of meals (or thereabouts), buy the stuff, and then don't need to go shopping for 3-4 weeks, because there are always ways to use odds and ends.

I wasn't super hungry on this day, so two bowls of this soup were all I needed. But if you're in a normal appetite mode, I suggest having the soup with some crusty bread or cornmeal muffins.